Tri-Service
Royal Navy Shadows Russian Warship From Baltic To Britain
Two Royal Navy ships have escorted a Russian frigate from the Baltic Sea to the English Channel and through to the Atlantic.
The Portsmouth-based frigate HMS Iron Duke, operating with a NATO task group, began tracking the Admiral Grigorovich through the Baltic Sea at the end of last week.
She handed over to HMS Sutherland, which escorted the ship down from the North Sea off Denmark through the Dover Straits and into the Channel. Commander Trish Kohn, Commanding Officer of Plymouth-based frigate HMS Sutherland, said:
"The Admiral Grigorovich was continually monitored as she sailed south from the Baltic. The transit of Russian ships from their northern ports is not unusual, but we're ready to protect UK territorial waters."
Sutherland was later joined by Dutch ship HNLMS Rotterdam and Belgian ship BNS Castor as part of the NATO tasking.
The Russian ship has now left UK territorial waters, believed to be on passage to the Black Sea.
It comes while four RAF Typhoon jets are flying from Amari air base in Estonia alongside nations including Portugal as part of the NATO Baltic Air Policing mission.
UK personnel, meanwhile, are providing training to Ukraine's Armed Forces following Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014. Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said:
"Our armed forces are working night and day to provide reassurance here at home and to our eastern NATO allies. We have troops exercising and providing training, planes policing the skies and ships patrolling the Baltics."
At the end of March HMS Somerset, a Type 23 frigate, shadowed a Russian naval task group transiting through the English Channel and up the east coast of the UK.
Somerset was used to detect and monitor the movement of the Russian destroyer Vice Admiral Kulakov and her supporting ships as they returned from Syria.
The Defence Secretary announced in April that Iron Duke would operate alongside NATO as part of the UK's commitment to the Baltics and Eastern Europe.
Sutherland, meanwhile, has been patrolling around the UK and has taken part in exercises with NATO partners, including Exercise Griffin Strike with the French Navy.
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